Toronto Sun columnist toes the party line on raw milk — suggests judge throw the book at farmer Michael Schmidt

Here’s an excerpt from an opinion piece in today’s Toronto Sun by columnist Connie Woodcock, which very much echoes a recent story in the Globe and Mail on a similar pro-pasteurization theme:

“….Louis Pasteur must be rolling in his grave.

He thought his pasteurization process would save the world from disease.

Turns out it was just another way for government to oppress us. Or at least, that’s the peculiar message rogue dairy farmer Michael Schmidt has been trying to sell.

Schmidt is the Durham-area farmer whose trial on 20 charges of selling raw milk wrapped up recently in Newmarket. He’s spent years trying to get around the law against the sale of unpasteurized milk and came up with a tricky way to subvert it by selling shares in his cows.

Schmidt, who likes to paint himself as a simple hayseed and a martyr to personal freedom, spent his trial arguing the raw milk law is unconstitutional because it interferes with people’s “freedom” to make their own choices. His side of the case was heavily reported. What was underreported was the truckload of scientific evidence the Crown introduced to prove the dangers of raw milk.

Farmer Schmidt goes to Washington

Here are some snapshots from Michael Schmidt’s recent trip to the States:

A capital idea -- our man in D.C. Now where's Obama?

Wherever the raw milk debate is, there farmer Michael Schmidt will be. While in the United States for the recent IAFP raw milk symposium in Arlington, Michael Schmidt paid a visit to Washington. Unfortunately, president Barack Obama was out at the time, presumably attending to other business, although it’s hard to imagine what could be higher on the nation’s agenda than raw milk.

A tale of two raw milk symposiums

Two Raw Milk Symposiums with a clear Difference, by Michael Schmidt

Dr. Ted Beals, Dr. Ron Hull, farmer Michael Schmidt and author Pam Killeen at International Raw Milk Symposium in Toronto, January 31, 2009, the first of two raw milk symposiums in N. America.

It was no surprise for me to see a ripple effect from the first international Raw Milk Symposium in Toronto. In Arlington not far from Washington DC  (you could see the Capitol and the Pentagon), the International Food Safety Association called rather desperately so called experts from across the continent on Raw Milk together in order to look at the issue of the “new emerging health threat of Raw Milk”.

At the first International Raw Milk Symposium in Toronto we tried to inform those, who have questions and wanted to gain more understanding of the whole issue. We tried to bring the entire scope of the Raw Milk issue into a broad perspective without engaging in the political game of using fear tactics.

At the follow up Raw Milk Symposium in Washington we entered into a scripted arena of those who apparently feel obligated to protect the public and the dairy industry.

School lunch controversy sparks a paroxym of Orwellian rhetoric

Today’s top menu item is from Kerry Trueman’s column in yesterday’s Huntington Post titled “Agribiz Biostute Declares Fresh Healthy Food a Menace” Note: this is not about raw milk.

Fresh vegetables the latest threat to the established order of things in America? Photo from Huffington Post.

“…..Quite frankly, though, conservatives don’t seem all that psyched about fresh fruits and vegetables. See, fruits and vegetables may be high in vitamin K, but they’re low on K street lobbyists. Fresh produce is, alas, a mere “specialty crop”, not a deep-pocketed special interest group worthy of generous subsidies.

This explains why commodity crops form the cornerstone of our National School Lunch Program rather than the fresh fruits and vegetables the USDA is launching yet another campaign to promote. So we’re feeding our kids a steady diet of “high-fat, low-grade meats and cheeses and processed foods like chicken nuggets and pizza,” as a recent New York Times op-ed from Alice Waters and Civil Eat’s Katrina Heron lamented.

Waters and Heron point out that this is a “poor investment,” and float the radical notion that perhaps the lunch program could try nourishing our kids with freshly prepared, wholesome, unprocessed foods instead of the heat ‘n’ serve commodity crop crap it currently dumps on our little dumplings.